She Spies Over The Top, Knows It

Once in a while, a show comes along that's so uniquely different from everything else on TV, you can't imagine how it possibly could have reached the air.

At a time when the networks are putting on so much mediocre, copycat fare -- cops, doctors and lawyers, families with pretty moms and not-so-pretty dads --She Spies arrives to say: We can stink in our own way.

Sure, the series, which premieres tonight on NBC, is part of a traditional and again-rising subgenre -- the trio of crime-fighting babes. Charlie's Angels established the template back in the mid-'70s and lately we've seen all kinds of examples, from the now-canceled Pam Anderson vehicle V.I.P. to the Powerpuff Girls.

Besides She Spies -- a wannabe spoof that will move to syndication this fall after four episodes on NBC -- the fall schedule also has the WB's Batman offshoot Birds of Prey and David E. Kelley's lawyerly triad called girls club.

But Cassie (Species hottie Natasha Henstridge), D.D. (Kristen Miller) and Shane (Natashia Williams) are such self-consciously over-the-top creations that they set a new standard for the piling on of ironic layers. To call She Spies a self-parody is more of a description than a criticism. It not only refers to itself, it refers to the fact that it's referring to itself.

The premiere's opening action sequence, involving a ticking bomb and these three panicky ex-cons, turns out to be a training exercise.

"Guys, this isn't a movie," one of the ladies says.

"Right," comes the reply. "Otherwise, we'd have better sets."

Later, this kind of self-referencing is taken to another level when the women begin deconstructing the supposedly underlying meaning of scenes they just took part in, quoting media theorist Marshall McLuhan, among others. They also stumble through the sets of other "shows" being shot on the same lot.

It's a shame, because with the sound turned down, She Spies looks like fun. There's nothing wrong with the intentionally cheesy-cheap sets, clumsy fights and visual techniques, including split screens a la 24, pop-up commentary a la VH1 and quick cuts a la every action show or movie around, creating the mood for an entertaining satire.

The problem is the script, which is constantly outsmarting itself. The writers should have concentrated on coming up with better jokes instead of on building such a rickety structure for the plots.

The premiere, in which the trio is supposed to protect a frisky ex-presidential candidate turned talk-show host (Spin City's Barry Bostwick), could've been a great parody of 24 or the Clinton administration.

The handsy politician offers to go over his notes with Shane over dinner (she's posing as a network executive), also proposing a "late-night contraceptive."

Later, Cassie (posing as a reporter), tells him she's all ears. "Not from this angle," he says.

Sex jokes are great, but they need to be funny. They also try gun-control jokes, Rob Schneider jokes (jokes about him, not by him) and jokes about disloyalty to your government.

"It's bad enough you rob our institutions," government operative Jack Wilde (Carlos Jacott) tells his charges, who have been let out of prison to help his agency catch bad guys. "You have to bad-mouth them too?"

At one point, the three burst into a room where they think the assassins are hiding, only to discover three women who look just like them and are in fact fellow ex-cons who've been hired to make a show about, etc., etc.

D.D. says, "At the risk of more exposition, what are you doing here?" They then go on to debate television in general.

"The first [episode] is always a cheat," D.D. says. "They put in lots of sex and action to make you think it's going to be like that every week," Shane adds.